Elaine Yaffe Obituary

Yaffe

Elaine (Gordon) Yaffe

June 24, 1937

July 20, 2021



Elaine Gordon Yaffe, a writer, photographer and Colorado College administrator who authored the first biography of visionary women's college president Mary Ingraham Bunting, died July 20 at her home in Denver. She was 84.



Yaffe was a 1959 graduate of Radcliffe College, then a women's school affiliated with -- but largely ignored by -- all-male Harvard University. During her college years, she resented the patronizing, discriminatory treatment that Harvard students and faculty often meted out to Radcliffe women; later, she lamented that she had graduated before the 1960-72 presidency of Bunting, a diplomatic but determined feminist who sought equal treatment for female students and steered Radcliffe toward full integration with Harvard.



In the early 1990s, Yaffe began research for her book, interviewing Bunting, who died in 1998, and scores of her friends, relatives and colleagues. "Mary Ingraham Bunting: Her Two Lives" was published in 2005, by Frederic C. Beil.



Elaine Gordon was born in New York City on June 24, 1937, to Helen (Roth) Gordon, a homemaker, and Mortimor Gordon, a lawyer. After graduating cum laude from Radcliffe, Elaine earned a master's degree from Columbia University's journalism school. She held jobs at LOOK magazine, the New York Herald Tribune and the Tarrytown Daily News.



In 1964, she married novelist and television writer James Yaffe, moving west seven years later when he took a job teaching English at CC. A New Yorker to her core, Elaine Yaffe found the move wrenching, but she made a place for herself in Colorado Springs, raising three children and pursuing her interests in education, politics and photography, an art form in which she excelled.



A photo she took as a volunteer on Dick Lamm's first gubernatorial campaign was reproduced (uncredited) in campaign literature and Lamm's recent autobiography; a strikingly lit shot of modern dancer Hanya Holm instructing a roomful of students was featured (uncredited) on a CC publicity poster. And her beautifully observed black-and-white portraits of young children were exhibited locally during the 1970s.



Later, Yaffe returned to journalism, writing an education column for the now-defunct Colorado Springs Sun newspaper and freelancing for national education trade publications. In the early 1980s, she joined the Colorado College administration, first in communications and later as assistant dean of the summer session, and she served as a volunteer trustee at the Colorado Springs School, which all three of her children attended.



In 2002, the Yaffes retired to New York, where they gorged on culture and enjoyed their grandchildren. But in 2017, James Yaffe's deteriorating health forced a second westward move, this time into assisted living in Denver, near one of their daughters. His death three months later was a terrible blow, but Elaine Yaffe continued writing to the end, turning the misery of pandemic quarantine into a series of personal essays published in the online magazine Slate.



Yaffe is survived by her children, Deborah, Rebecca and Gideon Yaffe; her grandchildren, David Yaffe-Bellany, Rachel Yaffe-Bellany and Oona Yaffe; and her sister, Barbara Landau.



In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the International Center of Photography in New York or any local arts organization.